As generative sweeps across industries, some workers using it are reporting increases in . But inside government, where those benefits could translate into better public services, many employees are still unsure how the technology applies to their jobs, how to use it, or whether they are allowed to.

And that was a challenge. Because I entered college in 2003, at the beginning of the war in Iraq, when everyone and their grandmother was convinced that learning Arabic was the ticket to getting a job in government. At the school I went to, all students were preregistered for classes with the exception of first-year students and graduate students, who had to attend classes before they could register. All classes were required to leave three seats open for first years and graduate students. So, I showed up to the first day of Beginning I Arabic along with 70 other students, all hoping to get one of those three seats. The instructor announced that he would not allow anyone to register for those three seats until there were only three students left in the class who wanted them. And so I proceeded to wait the rest of them out. I came to every class and did all the work in the class, without any guarantee that I would get in officially or get credit for it until enough people gave up that I was offered the slot. So the first thing I learned in my college career was that I would have to fight for the Humanities and they were worth fighting for. I am still doing that work today.

But aside from Arabic, I really didn’t know what else I wanted to study. So I started off by studying everything. I took classes in history, and political science, and anthropology, and comparative literature. And calculus, and biology, and Religious Studies. And they were all great classes, but I found that I had a particular love of that place where religion, history, literature, and philosophy met and connected. Those classes lit a fire in me. Because they showed me that in places and periods and languages that were wholly different from my own people had grappled with the questions that provoked and haunted me, questions of deep existential meaning and ongoing political urgency – and that they had expressed their answers in language that was profoundly beautiful. When I studied those answers, I found myself connected to peoples, movements, and cultures larger myself.  And as I went deeper and deeper into my studies, I found that they were changing me. Once I learned how to read deeply, I found that I could read anything, including the social and political institutions in which I was embedded. I learned to question everything, and to produce my own critical answers. I put myself to work imagining other, better worlds.

The period that I grew up in was really not perfect. I went to college – and then lived in the Middle East – during the Iraq War. A war of choice, when the President decided to invade a country that posed no threat to the United States, largely to secure access to vast oil resources. I then graduated from college into a massive financial disaster caused by the loosening of banking regulations so that very rich people could become even richer. So I can’t say that it was an easy time to be a young person – if there is ever an easy time to be a young person.

But I do think that it is much harder to be a young person today. I went through college at a time when few students had personal laptops, before the invention of the smart phone or the ipad or the rise of social media. The students I went to school with didn’t all like me – but they were all really present along with me in the spaces we shared. The political culture at the time seemed divisive, but it was nothing in comparison to the chaos and fury of the current age. It’s hard right now y’all.

But one of the things that is making it even harder is that the institutions and entities who are invested in dividing us from each other, in fracturing our attention and undermining our interpersonal relationships – are also selling us a particular approach to knowledge. This approach is, “the extractive attitude.” It is based on the idea that the purpose of knowledge is to extract resources from the environment and money from the economy – which ultimately means from consumers. This attitude is not new. I know from my own field of African history that the European governments who colonized various territories sent scholars out in the wake of the armies, geographers and engineers to survey and map the land, and linguists and anthropologists to learn languages, and catalogue customs. The purpose of these colonial scholar-soldiers was to facilitate the pacification of the population and the extraction of natural resources. Knowledge has always been a form of power. And then, just as now, deep engagement in storytelling, religious worldviews, and philosophy was disregarded and rejected as impractical. Education, according to the extractive attitude, is a product whose value measured as a return on investment. This attitude invites us to use learning to maintain a position in cultural and class warfare.

The opposite of the extractive attitude is a humanistic attitude. A humanistic attitude values knowledge for its ability to bring meaning and joy into our lives and our communities. A humanistic attitude evaluates our present relative to both our past and our vision of the future. A humanistic attitude is an approach that finds richness and complexity in things that seem simple. And it does those things through a deep engagement with the ideas and the art that have been produced by humans through the ages.

When I went to college I had to fight for a seat in a language class against the forces of opportunism. And I want you to fight for humanism, too. And it is a fight sometimes. A fight to maintain vision and resolve in the face of a thousand messages that tell us that the humanistic attitude is “useless.” The makers and marketers of new technological products are trying to convince us to give up our capacity for deep engagement. To give up our ability to generate ideas, to read literature, to think about the past, to make and appreciate art and culture, and to communicate with each other. To convince us to give up on humanism they threaten us with catastrophe and apocalypse. They warn that their products will change society so deeply that it will be unrecognizable, or that they might destroy humanity entirely. But I have my own message. For anyone who is worried about understanding these forces, or who is struggling to make sense of the world right now – the Humanities can help.

Those of us in Religious Studies have studied apocalyptic predictions, we know the distance between what they promise and what they deliver. Those of us in History have studied revolutions and know how politics and new forms of media align. Those of us in World Languages and Cultures know that our understanding of the world is shaped by language and how to connect with people across cultural differences. Those of us in Philosophy know that the potential for meaningful change is rooted in examination and reflection.  And those of us in English know (to paraphrase James Baldwin), that it is literature that teaches us that the things that torment us the most are the very things that connect us with all the people who are alive, or who have ever lived. The Humanities are a repository of our shared humanity and the heart of our capacity to be, not just human, but better humans. More than ever, humanity needs the Humanities. And right now, the Humanities needs you.

This fall, at colleges and universities across the country, new campus presidents, provosts and deans are starting their appointments with a listening tour. Just saying the words at the beginning-of-the-year assembly might elicit an audible groan from a long-suffering faculty member seated somewhere in the back of the auditorium.

Listening tours have become such commonplace rituals, especially on campuses that have experienced frequent leadership turnover, that they will almost surely be met with a tepid reception, if not overt skepticism. A groan is a thoroughly warranted response to a tour performed perfunctorily—highly documented for social media and amounting to little more than some scribbles in a notebook and opportunities for the new dean to show off an impressive wardrobe of campus T-shirts.

And yet, newly arriving leaders are facing stakes that are higher than ever. When financial deficits and enrollment pressures are layered atop an overt air of politicization and simmering mistrust of administrators, listening tours take on newfound importance and scrutiny.

As leaders who have undertaken our own listening tours—and who have sat across the table sizing up new leaders on theirs—we offer some perspectives to elevate your listening tour into the leadership act that it is. We are entering our third and fourth years in our current roles, and many of these insights are only apparent to us now.

The biggest misconception about listening tours is that their primary purpose is to give you more information, context and time before making hard decisions. Structured conversations will almost surely reinforce what you already know, help you become fluent in the local jargon and deepen your well of arcane campus trivia. But you can probably gather this information, and perhaps more efficiently, in other ways.

See yourself first and foremost as an ethnographer. The real value of a listening tour is that it provides you with rich nuance and insights into interpersonal dynamics that can’t be found in the fact book. What you hear between groups and individuals—points of pride, sacred myths, where there is shared agreement and where there decidedly isn’t—equips you to take informed, calculated risks.

Your listening tour is, for all practical purposes, the first formal demonstration of how you lead. In most cases, it will be the single highest-leverage act of your first year on the job.

Here’s a truth worth saying plainly: While you are touring them, they are touring you. Every colleague across the table is running a quiet calculation of their own, deciding whether you are someone worth investing in or someone to wait out. The tour is a two-way audition, and the leader who understands that they, too, are onstage behaves differently (and often better) than those who assume the spotlight only points one way.

Read more on .

North Carolina has shown strong economic growth in recent years, attracting major corporate investments such as JetZero and Amazon. In the first six months of the year, the state recorded 58 new projects representing 7,249 jobs and $5.6 billion in capital investment.

We’re the envy of much of the rest of the country.

But sustaining that growth will require more than recruiting companies to North Carolina. It will require making sure the state has the talent, skills and ideas those companies need to grow once they arrive. And that means building stronger, more intentional relationships between businesses and the state’s universities, colleges and community colleges.

Higher education has long provided workers, research, technology and ideas to thousands of North Carolina businesses. But as competition for jobs and economic investment becomes fiercer — and as artificial intelligence, tariffs and demographic changes reshape the workplace — the relationship between higher education and business needs to become a much higher priority.

The reason is simple: universities cannot effectively prepare students for the future of work if they aren’t talking regularly with the people creating that future.

Colleges nationwide are facing a well-known enrollment cliff, with a projected decline of at least 13% nationally by 2041 because of declining birth rates. Six of North Carolina’s biggest school districts saw enrollment declines in 2026, and the number of public and private high school graduates in the state is expected to plateau between now and 2041, according to the N.C. Office of State Budget and Management.

At the same time, North Carolina is projected to need more than a quarter of a million additional workers by 2034. The companies hiring those workers will want graduates who can contribute quickly—not only with technical knowledge, but with critical thinking, communication, problem-solving and the ability to adapt.

That creates an important responsibility for higher education: to listen to employers as carefully as universities expect employers to listen to them.

You already know what gas costs. You watch that number tick up on the drive to work every morning. Right now, it’s somewhere around $4.48 a gallon, give or take. That’s roughly a dollar and a half more than you were paying before February. If you farm or haul or drive an 18-wheeler, you know what diesel costs, and it’s worse.

Nobody needs CNN or other news organizations to tell them what’s observable. You can read a sign. What you might need a reporter for is the next part: why.

In late February, this country went to war with Iran. President Donald Trump said it would be over quickly. It is now month seven. The Strait of Hormuz, a channel in the Middle East through which a fifth of the world’s oil moves, has been contested since spring. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that gasoline jumped again in August, economists, market analysts and financial news outlets widely agreed that the war in the Middle East is the primary reason behind the price hike.

At least 18 American servicemembers are dead across the wider regional conflict, six of them in a drone strike on a base in Kuwait. The Pentagon has extended deployments into 2027 after telling families it wouldn’t. Ammunition stockpiles are thin enough that senior commanders have raised it with the Defense Secretary.

That is the reporting being done at CNN, MS NOW and Politico. It isn’t commentary, and it certainly isn’t somebody’s opinion about the president’s temperament. That is what the White House press corps has been filing for six months.

And it is that reporting the president continues to attack.

In March, when CNN reported that his national security team had not planned for Iran closing Hormuz, his press secretary declared the story fake news. This month, when outlets reported the ammunition shortages, he called the coverage treasonous. When the Defense Secretary was asked about coverage of dead American troops, he suggested it existed to make the president look bad.

Then on Sept. 18, the president announced that CNN, MS NOW and Politico were banned from the White House. On Sept. 19, their reporters were turned away at the gate and their passes taken. On Sept. 21, they sued.

Here is the part worth sitting with. In his social media post announcing the ban, and in everything he has said since, the president has not identified a single story that was wrong. Not one article, not one error, not one correction demanded. When he was asked directly whether he was trying to intimidate the press, he said the outlets write negative news to “diminish the Republicans.”

That is not a complaint about accuracy. That is a statement about an election.

And that’s what makes this different from the usual fight between a president and reporters who annoy him. Every president has hated his coverage. Trump claiming negative coverage is fake is not new. What is new is that he now readily admits coverage about the Middle East and consumer prices hurts Republicans six weeks before an election. And that’s the point of banning reporters from the White House.

So, ask yourself the practical question, the one that actually touches your life. What is it he doesn’t want you to see or hear before November?

It’s not the high prices, because Trump can’t hide that truth. It’s on a sign at eye level in every town in America, and he knows it. What Trump can do is interrupt the explanation. You are going to feel this war either way. The only question is whether you know that’s what you’re feeling, or whether you spend the next six weeks being told it’s somebody else’s fault: Ukraine, the Federal Reserve, Joe Biden, the oil companies, whoever’s available.

Trump is not protecting you from lies. He is betting that you can feel the pain of higher bills and not connect it to his choices.

That is a bet about you. Honestly, I’d take it personally if I were you.

And notice you don’t have to take a single news network’s word for any of it. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called for the Defense Secretary to be fired and said he had never seen more inept management of American servicemembers. The Army Secretary has resigned. The Navy’s top admiral and the commanders responsible for Europe, Asia and Latin America told the Secretary of Defense directly that the deployment could not be sustained. It’s the reporters who wrote it down. And now, they’re the ones who are out.

I know it’s easy to distrust information or news that conflicts with your beliefs. But there’s a difference between a press you distrust and a press the government gets to edit. The difference shows up exactly here: when the reporting is inconvenient, on a subject that costs you money, with a vote now five weeks away.

Verify every word they write. It’s not only your right but your obligation to hold the press accountable, as it holds the government accountable.

“The press was to serve the governed,” wrote Supreme Court Associate Justice Hugo Black in the Pentagon Papers case, “not the governors.” The First Amendment forbids “the Government’s power to censor the press” so that “the press would remain forever free to censure the Government.”

It is the duty of the press to “prevent any part of the government from deceiving” you. Just make sure you’re the one deciding what accurate information reaches you. Because right now Trump is making that call, and he’s making it on the theory that you’d change your mind if you knew.

Doesn’t everyone just love the word sin? I know I don’t. Sin is a loaded word. I find it intimidating, scary, and perhaps a little bit shameful. It is uncomfortable to consider all the ways I fail those I care about and contribute to the brokenness of our world. However, just because something is uncomfortable doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth doing. After all, how can I improve myself if I can’t take an honest look (at least once a year) at all the ways in which I fall short?

Every year I remind y’all that Yom Kippur is a day of forgiveness for our communal sins. If we have harmed another person directly, we should apologize to that person directly and work to repair the relationship. On Yom Kippur we confess the collective sins of the Jewish people, hoping, praying, and trusting that God will forgive us and accept us back in love.

The two main prayers of confession are – “We Are Guilty” and  – “For Our Sin” As it happens, we may not have committed many of the sins mentioned in these prayers. We also may not consider many of the actions we’re confessing to be sinful – our culture is very different from that of the ancient world. However, some categories of sin – such as speech-based sin – are still relevant today. The ancient rabbis understood just as we do that speech can be one of the most potent and harmful forms of sinning out there.

The prayer Ashamnu has 22 phrases, each corresponding to a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It is an alphabetized catalog of sins. I count 5 explicit instances of speech-based sinning: dibbarnu dofi – we’ve spoken slander; tafalnu sheqer – we’ve spoken lie after lie; ya’atznu ra’ – we’ve advised wrongly (or advised evil); kizavnu – we’ve deceived; and latznu – we’ve mocked. If you include other phrases that could apply to speech acts, such as angering, rebelling, betraying, causing others to sin or become evil, sinning deliberately or sinning carelessly, committing abominations, making errors, or just being guilty in general, that’s at least 9 more. Whether explicit or implicit, most of the sins in Ashamnu can describe speech. This is an extraordinary number.

A similar focus on speech occurs in the prayer Al Cheit. We have sinned through: bittui s’fatayim – utterance of the lips; dibbur peh – using (or misusing) our mouths; viddui peh – only confessing verbally when actions of repentance are required (we might call this a “lip service” confession); tifshut peh – foolish talk; tum’at s’fatayim – impurity of the lips; kachash uvkhazav – false denial and false promise; lashon hara’ – evil talk (or slander); latzon – scoffing; siach sif’teinu – prattle of our lips; rechilut – gossiping; shevuat shav’ – swearing in vain. Like the Ashamnu prayer, Al Cheit mentions many other kinds of actions that can be applied to speech more broadly.

I don’t know about you, but I find this list of speech-based sins absolutely overwhelming. I have gossiped, scoffed, lied, deceived, and spoken badly of someone not just in the past year, but probably also this past week. I don’t even know how to track the full impact of my speech-based sin: often it is not directed against someone but contributes to a negative culture more broadly.

I think the rabbis were onto something when they lifted up speech-based sin as both extremely harmful and extremely hard to avoid. And the rabbis lived long before social media…. Nowadays, many speech-based sins aren’t even directly attributable to humans – the AI bots have learned from us how to sin with words! They’re having entire conversations without us!

So why does this matter? Let me tell you one place where I see the most harmful effects of sinful speech impacting the Jewish people and our campus today.

Three years ago when I first learned about October 7th, I was horrified. I had lived in Israel for two and a half years and thought of the many friends I still had there. Were they okay? Were their families okay? As a rabbi and a chaplain, the most pressing work right after October 7th was listening to y’all students talk about how Oct 7th impacted you personally. For so many of us here tonight, when we speak about Israel, we’re not talking about some abstract, far away other:  we’re talking about family and friends – people near and dear to our hearts.

As I listened to students share after October 7th, it quickly became clear to me that there was a second emotional crisis unfolding: the repeated fracturing of friendships, many of which were caused or exacerbated by social media. I repeatedly heard from students who identified as Zionists that they wanted others to know they didn’t want Palestinian civilians to suffer. And I heard from several pro-Palestinian students (Jewish and non-Jewish alike) that they wanted to express their criticisms of the government of the state of Israel without being antisemitic. Many of them approached me for advice on how to do so.

If we only took our cues from social media or just the media landscape more broadly, we might think that we can either support Israelis OR Palestinians, that we could either support the return of the hostages OR work to safeguard Palestinian civilian lives, or that we need to choose between supporting a Jewish, democratic state OR the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. I don’t believe that we have to make these choices. Our minds are big enough to hold two ideas simultaneously and our hearts are big enough to care for the whole world.

Another error of social media is that it creates an echo chamber that encourages us to be in relationship only with people who agree with us. Social media encourages a latent human tendency to demonize those who are different. Somehow, engaging with people who hold different views than you do has come to be a thing we should do, rather than a thing we get to do. Yes, conversations highlighting differences of opinion can sometimes be uncomfortable and even downright excruciating. But they can also be generative and even delightful. After all, how would we ever learn anything if we only ever heard opinions we agree with? How would we grow?

When we can engage with others who hold different views than we do from a place of mutual respect and curiosity, our conversations and communities become elevated. Engaging with different voices helps us to develop empathy and wisdom. When we can approach these conversations from a place of psychological and physiological safety, they can broaden our minds and open our hearts. We can learn and we can grow. I cannot tell you how many times my own thinking on various topics has become far sharper when I have engaged with those I disagree with. I also cannot tell you the number of times I have been surprised and touched by someone else’s story. Hearing differing perspectives – when practiced in an atmosphere of mutual respect and safety – is a gift.

If I had to pick one of the biggest communal sins of the Jewish people from the past several years, it is that we have too often used our words to tear each other apart for having different views on Israel. We have failed to speak respectfully to one another. We have failed to listen. We have failed to honor the good intentions of others. We have failed to see the humanity of the person who disagrees with us, or the deeper universal values at play behind their specific politics. We have failed to see how learning to understand different opinions – including the opinions of those among us who may just want to be Jewish and not think too much about Israel – can strengthen our community. We have failed to create safe spaces to discuss our differences constructively. And we have failed to open our hearts to each other. We have put politics over relationships.

I want to be clear. I do not believe that we caused this situation on our campus. It is a symptom of a much broader, systemic issue facing the global Jewish community today. However, we do have the opportunity to change how we speak to one another on this campus. We can choose to take a different path together.

On Yom Kippur we confess the collective sins of the Jewish people, hoping, praying, and trusting that God will forgive us and accept us back in love. It is an opportunity for a fresh start. My invitation for us all gathered here tonight is that we may also consider what it might mean to confess our collective speech-based sins to each other. My hope is that this confession might break open our hearts so that we can better connect with one another. I pray that we can work together to build a stronger Jewish community, one based on mutual respect and honoring differences, one that elevates each other and our conversations, and one in which all can trust that we will be accepted in love.

Finally, I want to acknowledge that I have used a lot of words to give this message to you! I am sure my own words have been imprecise and imperfect. I pray my message will be received according to the intention with which it is given – to strengthen the Jewish community in love. And if I’ve said anything tonight that resonates with you – whether you agree or disagree, whether you understand or you have no idea what I’m talking about and want to know more, or if you feel unseen or unheard by what I have said – I invite you to reach out. Let’s talk. I am sure that I have something to learn from you. And together we can create a new story about how we talk about Israel together on campus and beyond. To echo the ancient words of the psalmist (adapted from ) yehiyu l’ratzon imrei finu vehigiyon libeinu lefanecha Adonai tzureinu vego’aleinu – may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you Adonai, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Even now when I think of that moment – twenty-five years later – my shoulders become tense and my stomach begins to churn. I feel the emotional echo of that moment in my body. So much history has unfolded in the past twenty-five years, and yet my memories of Sept 11, 2001 still feel real. As many of y’all know, modern psychology teaches us that trauma lives in our bodies, but the body-based nature of memory can still surprise me.

One of the most potent symbols and practices of Rosh Hashanah is the blowing of the shofar. However, because of the rabbinic prohibition on blowing the shofar on Shabbat, this year most traditional communities will wait until the second day to hear the shofar. Rather than experiencing Rosh Hashanah as a day of shofar blowing (Yom HaTru’ah, ), we will experience it as a day of remembering shofar blowing (Zicharon Tru’ah, ).

As anyone who has heard the shofar knows, hearing its blasts constitutes a profound embodied spiritual experience. The shofar represents birth, alarm, victory, and a demanding invitation that we wake up to the reality of our lives. When the shofar is not sounded on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, we feel its absence and we long for its return.

The spiritual invitation of a shofar-less Rosh Hashanah is to lean into memory. Just as we remember traumatic events in our bodies, so too can we remember transcendent moments, such as hearing the shofar. Because we do not have the sound of the shofar to help us direct our attention inward, we must rely on our memories. We must choose to remember so that the shofar – even in its absence – becomes a force for good in our lives.

A shofar-less Rosh Hashanah reminds us that we have choices about what we remember and how we remember it. Memories of trauma may live in our bodies, but so do memories of joy, connection, hope, and resilience. When remembering Sept 11th, 2001, I may always feel an echo of the emotional experience I felt on that day. However, rather than focusing exclusively on my grief, I can expand my awareness to include the gratitude I felt at not having to experience that moment alone. I was with my friend, and we were able to experience that difficult moment together. My heart warms at the memory.

As we move into a new Jewish year, I invite all of us to remember that we have family, friends, and communities that can be with us through hard times. Look around – many of the people in this room may be your friends (or your future friends!). Each of you has the opportunity to experience the ups and downs of college life with each other.

I know that there are many broken and unfinished parts of this world, but I am grateful that we can have partners in this journey called life. And I pray that the memory of all the lives lost on Sept 11th, 2001 may be for a blessing. May their memories inspire us to do the work of building a better future together.

Note: A different version of this piece appeared originally in .

Welcome to Â鶹ĘÓƵ! Welcome first years, welcome back returning students, and welcome families. We are so very glad that you have chosen to be here with us.

This week’s Torah portion (parshah) is called . Ki Teitzei means “when you go out”. In the parshah, this going out refers to war and is immediately followed by laws governing the taking of captives. The parshah then provides an extensive collection of commandments.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that while I imagine that moving into Â鶹ĘÓƵ may have been a rough or challenging experience for many of you, it probably didn’t feel like going to war. At the very least, I hope it did not! However, I imagine that going out from the homes and families you have grown up in has also involved taking care of an extensive list of seemingly unconnected details, just like the parshah.

In looking over these detailed commandments, one struck me as essential to thriving here at Â鶹ĘÓƵ. says “If you see your brother’s [or your fellow’s] donkey or ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it; you must raise it together.”
At first glance, this verse may not appear to be relevant to our lives. I am unaware of any donkeys or oxen present on Â鶹ĘÓƵ’s campus, although if senior administrators know differently, please let me know! [Correction: apparently have been an issue!] However, if you bear with me, I will show you why this verse still matters for us here today.

The Talmud () – an ancient collection of commentary on rabbinic law considered authoritative for traditional observance even today – connects this passage with a similar passage from : “When you see a donkey of your enemy lying under its burden and would refrain from raising it, you must nevertheless help raise it.”

According to traditional rabbinic interpretation (), the verse from Exodus commands us to remove undue burdens from animals, even animals belonging to people who hate us. This command shows us that we should alleviate animal suffering whenever possible.

However, the verse from this week’s parsha in Deuteronomy is understood to command us to put a load back onto an animal if its load has fallen off. This verse teaches us that we should not just care for the animal, but also for the owner of the animal, honoring their intentions to build a secure life for themselves. The verse also clarifies that we are meant to put the load back onto the animal with the owner. We are meant to care for the economic success and flourishing of our fellows with our fellows.

So why does this matter? These laws in these verses matter in three ways.

First, many of us live our lives carrying heavy emotional burdens. We are not donkeys or oxen, but college life can sometimes be a lot to bear. If the Torah asks us to alleviate animal suffering, how much more so would it want us to assist each other in relieving our own suffering? We at Jewish Life (Betsy, Boaz, Jay, Sarah, Tal, and myself) want you to know that we are here for you and will be here for you whenever you need us.

Second, college is also a time of growth and opportunity. There are some burdens (such as the responsibilities and privileges of adulthood) you will want to take on! Classes, internships, study abroad, leadership experiences, Greek life, clubs – these are aspects of college life that I know many of you are already excited about! We are also here to help you grow in the ways you want to grow and support your flourishing!

Finally, you may have heard the phrase – all of the Jewish people are responsible for one another. I believe that forming relationships – with mentors and with each other – is the most important part of the college experience. I know that it can sometimes take time to make friends at college and to find your place. It is totally normal to feel anxious about making friends. If you do feel this way, know you’re not alone!

As you and your families adjust your being in college, I hope all of you gathered here today know that you will always have a home with Jewish Life at Â鶹ĘÓƵ. We’re here to help you let go of or manage the burdens you don’t want, take on the burdens you do want, and help you form the relationships with one another that will sustain you through college and beyond. We are so happy that you have chosen to make your home with us. Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. Let us all take care of one another. Shabbat shalom.

Visiting Â鶹ĘÓƵ in the next academic year:

• David Brooks, bestselling author, staff writer for The Atlantic and longtime New York Times columnist – Sept. 25, 2026
• Hanif Abdurraqib, author and cultural critic (Common Reading Lecture) – Sept. 29, 2026
• Lance Cpl. Kyle Carpenter, Medal of Honor recipient and author – Nov. 11, 2026
• Danielle Coke Balfour, artist, author and social justice advocate – Jan. 13, 2027
• Tim Tebow, Heisman Trophy winner, former NFL quarterback and philanthropist – March 9, 2027
• Heather Cox Richardson, historian and bestselling author – April 6, 2027

All programs are free to Â鶹ĘÓƵ students, faculty and staff with ID. Venues will be announced closer to the dates of the programs. Tickets for the public for Fall Convocation go on sale starting in August. Admission: $15 via .

Â鶹ĘÓƵ’s Cultural Calendar for Fall 2026 will be available later this year with additional speakers and a wide range of musical, theatrical, artistic and other intellectual and creative events.

Â鶹ĘÓƵ the 2026-2027 Speakers at Â鶹ĘÓƵ

David Brooks

Sept. 25, 2026

Fall Convocation

3:30 p.m.

A bestselling author and longtime New York Times columnist, Brooks is a leading observer of American culture, politics and civic life. He serves as a staff writer at The Atlantic, a commentator on PBS NewsHour and a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. Over decades in journalism, his columns have become some of the most widely read in the nation, offering insight into political dynamics, social trends and the challenges facing modern democracy.

Brooks is the author of multiple bestselling books, including “How to Know a Person,” “The Second Mountain,” “The Road to Character” and “The Social Animal,” which explore moral development, human connection and the search for meaning. His work emphasizes the importance of community, empathy and the cultivation of both inner character and outward relationships as essential to a flourishing society.

Hanif Abdurraqib

Sept. 29, 2026

Common Reading Lecture

7:30 p.m.

An acclaimed essayist, poet and cultural critic, Abdurraqib is widely recognized for his lyrical and deeply personal writing that explores music, identity and the intersections of culture and lived experience. His work blends criticism with memoir, offering readers a nuanced perspective on art, belonging and the forces that shape contemporary life.

Abdurraqib is the author of several award-winning books and is known for his ability to connect cultural analysis with broader questions about race, community and memory. “There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension” was selected as Â鶹ĘÓƵ’s Common Reading for 2026-27.

Lance Cpl. Kyle Carpenter

Nov. 11, 2026

Carol Ann Walker International Lectureship

11 a.m.

A United States Marine and the youngest living recipient of the Medal of Honor, Carpenter is recognized for extraordinary heroism during his service in Afghanistan. In 2010, he sustained life-threatening injuries after throwing himself on a grenade to protect a fellow Marine, an act of valor that led to years of recovery and more than 40 surgeries.

Following his recovery, Carpenter set and achieved ambitious personal goals, including completing a college degree, running a marathon and traveling internationally. He is the author of the memoir “You Are Worth It: Building a Life Worth Fighting For,” which chronicles his journey of resilience and purpose. Today, he speaks widely about leadership, perseverance and finding meaning in adversity, encouraging others to overcome challenges and pursue lives of impact.

Danielle Coke Balfour

Jan. 13, 2027

Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Address

12 p.m.

An artist, entrepreneur and author, Balfour is the founder of Oh Happy Dani, an illustration-based educational platform that uses visual storytelling to make complex ideas about racial justice and advocacy accessible to broad audiences. Through her work, she has built a community of hundreds of thousands who engage with her content on social media and beyond.

Her creative approach to “artivism” combines design, storytelling and education to inspire individuals to take meaningful action in their own communities. She is the author of “A Heart on Fire: 100 Meditations on Loving Your Neighbors Well” and a companion workbook that encourages reflection and everyday advocacy. Through partnerships with major brands and speaking engagements across the country, she promotes a message of hope, empathy and sustained engagement in social change.

Tim Tebow

March 9, 2027

Baird Lecture

7 p.m.

A Heisman Trophy winner and two-time national champion, Tebow gained national prominence as a quarterback at the University of Florida before being selected in the first round of the NFL Draft. He later played professional baseball and has become a prominent sports analyst, author and motivational speaker.

Tebow is a seven-time New York Times bestselling author and founder of the Tim Tebow Foundation, an organization that serves vulnerable populations in more than 70 countries through initiatives focused on faith, health and human dignity. Through his speaking and philanthropic efforts, Tebow encourages audiences to pursue their passions, lead with integrity and make a positive impact in the lives of others.

Heather Cox Richardson

April 6, 2027

James P. Elder Lecture

6:30 p.m.

A professor of history at Boston College, Richardson is a leading scholar of American political history with expertise in the Civil War, Reconstruction and the evolution of the Republican Party. Her work examines the intersections of politics, economics and social change, helping audiences better understand the forces shaping the nation’s past and present.

She is the author of several award-winning books, including the bestselling “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America,” which explores the nation’s ongoing struggle to uphold its own ideals. Richardson also writes “Letters from an American,” a nightly newsletter that reaches millions of readers with analysis of current events in historical context. She hosts two video series, “Journey to American Democracy” and “American Conversations,” both of which are available on YouTube and Facebook. Her articles and reviews have been published in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and The Guardian, among others.